I've discovered not many current artists are consistent. Even in their CD releases song selection quality varies, the mixing is muddy but each track is mastered as loud as they can make it. A lot of music is thrown out for consumption.

After sounding so negative I must admit I'm surprised at how often I run across material I like. My library pays for five MP3 downloads each week from the Sony music catalog. I spend about half a day combing through new releases each week and I never have trouble finding five songs to download. Recent downloads include music by Bobby McFerin, Spango, The Church, Frumpy, Joe Simon, Luke Combs, JD McPherson, Bob Schneider, Old Crow Medicine Show, Wade Bowan, Jason Boland and Dana Fuchs to name a few. Yes I know not all are new artists but all the songs are new to me.

Some producers are going against the grain by not fighting the loudness war but everyone plays that game at least some of the time. I would say about half the songs on Luke Comb's new CD are mastered as loud as they can be.

So to me, the discussion is not so much about the merits of any particular artist as much as it is about production values and song management.

Jim Fogle - 2025 BiaB (Build 1128) RB (Build 5) - Ultra+ PAK
DAWs: Cakewalk Sonar - Standalone: Zoom MRS-8
Laptop: i3 Win 10, 8GB ram 500GB HDD
Desktop: i7 Win 11, 12GB ram 256GB SSD, 4 TB HDD
Music at: https://fogle622.wix.com/fogle622-audio-home